The Origin of the Terms "," "Phoenician," and "Purple" Author(s): Michael C. Astour Reviewed work(s): Source: Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 24, No. 4, Erich F. Schmidt Memorial Issue. Part Two (Oct., 1965), pp. 346-350 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/543644 . Accessed: 04/01/2012 03:07

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Near Eastern Studies.

http://www.jstor.org THE ORIGIN OF THE TERMS "CANAAN," "PHOENICIAN," AND "PURPLE"1

MICHAEL C. ASTOUR, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts I

FOR a long time the name "Canaan" was considered Semitic. Then this name appeared in cuneiform texts from Tell -Amarna and Bo'azk6y as Ki-na-ah-ni, Ki-na- ah-na, Ki-na-ah-hi, Ki-na-a-ah-hi, and Ki-na-hi, i.e., both with the suffix -ni/-na and without it. The suffixed form, corresponding to Hebrew, Phoenician, and Egyptian Kncn, occurs in Amarna letters from (Tyre and ); the non-suffixed form, similar to Chna, the mythical ancestor of the Phoenicians in of Byblos, was used outside Canaan. Progress in grammatical analysis of the Hurrian language caused Julius Lewy to interpret "Canaan"as a Hurrian word, formed with the Hurrian suffixes -h(h)i and -na.2 It was also revealed that, in the Akkadian-written texts of Nuzu, a pre- dominantly Hurrian city, the word kinahhu designated "red purple dye."3 E. A. Speiser understood this term as an adjective derived from "Canaan," the native name of Phoenicia, a country famous for purple production.4 W. F. Albright, on the other hand, explained the word kinahhi5 as a genuine Hurrian adjective which precisely meant "purple,"6 "Canaan" thus being a Hurrian appellative of Phoenicia as the country of purple dye.7 New epigraphic discoveries in Egypt, , and Alalah revealed early occurrences of the name "Canaan" already in its classical form Kncn, the spelling of which is in- compatible with Hurrian phonetics.8 S. Moscati, on the basis of the new facts, con- cluded: "Kn'n is the original form and kinahhu the derived one; the name Canaan ... is autochthonous; the characteristic industry of dying fabrics in red took its name from

1 Read at the 174th Meeting of the American from uqnid, "blue purple," and designated a different Oriental Society New York City, April 9, 1964. dye, as indicated by B. Maisler (Mazar), "Canaan and 2 Julius Lewy, "Influences hurrites sur Israel," the Canaanites" (see p. 16), p. 8. R19S, 1938, pp. 49 ff. W. F. Albright arrived in- 7W. F. Albright, "The Role of the Canaanites in dependently at similar conclusions, published four the History of Civilization," 1st ed., in Studies in the years later (cf. n. 7). History of Culture (Menasha, Wisconsin, 1942), p. 25, 3 Cf. E. A. Speiser, in One Hundred New Selected n. 50. Nuzi Texts, transliterated by Robert H. Pfeiffer, 8 The Hurrian explanation implied that "Canaan" with translations and commentary by E. A. Speiser passed to the West Semites as *Kngn before it was (=AASOR, XVI [1935-1936]), 49, 121 f., 143; see spelled Kncn in the Hebreo-Phoenician script, which also n. 4. did not graphically distinguish g from c. In Egyptian, E. A. 4 Speiser, "The Name Phoinikes," Language, the West Semitic and Hurrian g was transcribed by g XII (1936), 121-26. or q, so one would expect *Kngn or *Knqn. But 5 Considered as the original Hurrian form, although the Ugaritic script had different letters for kinahhu being the Akkadianized nominative. g and c, nonetheless the ethnicon "Canaanite" was 6 Understood as *kna-q7i < *ikna-gqi, where spelled kncny (Gordon, UM 311:7). The Memphis *ikna- was supposed to be the Hurrianized form of stela of Amenophis II (ca. 1430) has Kincanu for Akkadian uknd. Ugaritic -iqna u, "lapis lazuli" or "Canaanites" just as the Karnak inscription of Seti I "blue purple." There were two objections to this has p:-Kncn. Moreover, in so Hurrianized an environ- hypothesis: (a) double -hh- transliterated the Hurrian ment as Alalah, "Canaan" was written Ki-in-a-nimki voiceless velar spirant corresponding to West Semitic (Inscription of Idri-mi, 11. 63, 64), Ki-in-a-ni and not the voiced q h, one rendered in Ugaritic by (q), cf. Ki-en-a-ni (AT 48:5; 154:24; 181:9), transcribing E. A. c Speiser, IH, ?? 54-59; Albright realized this Kincan- with a weakly pronounced c. The is peculiar difficulty but did not resolve it; (b) in the Nuzu texts, to West and South Semitic and to Egyptian; it does kinahhu as wool coloring was clearly distinguished not occur in Hurrian. 346 "CANAAN," "PHOENICIAN," AND "PURPLE" 347

the region-as, e.g., muslin from Mossul--and not vice versa."9 W. F. Albright conceded that "the Hurrian explanation seems to be ruled out, though the ending -n(i) may still be non-Semitic." 10 The original non-suffixed form of "Canaan" may thus be restored as *Kinacu, a qital formation from the West Semitic root KNC, normally becoming Kinahhu in Ak- kadian transcription, with the gemination of the last consonant which frequently took place in the spelling of non-Akkadian words and geographical names,"1 like Amurru, Simurru, Mitanni (nominative *Mitannu), HIilakku, etc. As a geographical name, it was regularly used in the genitive: matKinahhi, like mAtAmurri, m"tMitanni, matSubari, etc. Since the suffixed form Kinac-nu (in cuneiform documents written in the genitive, with the ending -ni/-na 12) was the one used in West-Semitic-speaking regions (including Phoenicia, where no Hurrian influence can be detected), the ending -n- is to be taken as an attested, though rare, Semitic noun-forming suffix,13 rather than as a Hurrian definite article.14 It remains to establish the West Semitic etymology of "Canaan." E. A. Speiser only noted that "the origin and etymology of Kncn and its cognates are not strictly relevant to the present problem,"15 i.e., to the derivation of the name "Phoenicians." According to B. Mazar, of the two Biblical usages of kenacan(i), the common noun "merchant" is the original and the ethnicon "Canaanite," the derived one, "Canaan" being "the country of merchants."16 However, nothing in the root KNC suggests any relation to commerce, not excluding the hapax *kin'd or *kenaca (Jer. 10:17) which Mazar inter- preted as "merchandise."17 It is inherently more probable that the ethnicon "Canaanite" acquired the connotation "merchant" in Biblical Hebrew because of the renowned commercial activities of the Phoenicians.18W. F. Albright now proposes either to follow B. Mazar or to assume "a lost Semitic word *knc for 'murex,"' in order to save the signification "purple-dye country" for Canaan.19 If such a word for "murex" ever existed in Semitic, it has been so completely lost that no hint whatsoever allows one to make this kind of assumption. It was formerly supposed that "Canaan" might signify "lowland"; but the root KNC does not have the intransitive meaning "to be low." S. Moscati, rejecting for good reasons all of the previously suggested etymologies of "Canaan," did not adduce any of his own.

9 Sabatino Moscati, "Sulla storia del nome still lists Kinah-na among geographical names which Canaan," Studia Biblica et Orientalia, III (1959) end in the Hurrian plural article -na; Albright pre- (= Analecta Biblica, Vol. 12), 268. ferred the singular form of this article, -ni. 10 W. F. Albright, "The Role of the Canaanites in 15 E. A. Speiser, op. cit. (see n. 4), p. 123, n. 12. the History of Civilization," 2d ed., in The Bible and 16 B. Maisler (Mazar), "Canaan and the Canaan- the Ancient Near East (1961), p. 356, n. 50. ites," BASOR, No. 102 (April 1946), pp. 7-12. 11 Cf. W. von Soden, Grundriss der akkadischen 17 In the sentence "ispi mg-leres kincdtlk, "gather Grammatik, ? 58. up from the ground thy k." It is true that the Targum 12 For numerous examples of genitive in -a, cf. renders it by sehortd, and Symmachus by emporia. the indices of personal names in J. Nougayrol, PRU But the Septuagint has simply hypostasis, "anything III and IV. set under, a stand, base, bottom, sediment," which 13 Carl Brockelmann, Grundriss der vergleichenden agrees both with the meaning of the root KNc (see Grammatik der semitischen Sprachen, I (1908), ? 218.a, next paragraph of the text) and with the context in lists Kenacan among nouns with the suffix -n, along which the noun occurs in Jer. 10:17. It evidently with Hebrew sipp6ren, "nail," and a few analogous designates any bundle, load, or burden set down from formations in other Semitic languages. Same ap- the shoulders or animal-back to the ground. proach in Arthur Ungnad, Hebrdische Grammatik 18 As it has been generally presumed earlier and (1912), ? 121. III.2.b. is now stated by Moscati, op. cit. (n. 9), p. 269. 14 19 A. Goetze, "Cilicians," JOS, XVI (1962), 52, W. F. Albright, loc. cit. (n. 10). 348 JOURNAL OF NEAR EASTERN STUDIES

The established semantics of the root KNc provide us, however, with an acceptable explanation of the name "Canaan." In Biblical Hebrew, it is found only in niphal ("to be subdued" or "to lower oneself") and in hiphil ("to subdue"). In Aramaic, it occurs also in qal (kenac, "to bow down, bend"). In Arabic, the verb kanacahas several semanti- cally unconnected usages, of which those related to the Hebrew and Aramaic cognates are: (a) "to fold wings and to descend to earth" (said of a large bird), and (b) "to bow, to incline toward the horizon" (said of a star).20 As applied to the sun, it would be exactly equivalent to the "occidere," the derived form Kinacu or Kincanu sig- nifying the "Occident," the "Land of Sunset" or "Westland"-the West Semitic translation or counterpart of Amurru. This Akkadian term for Syria, partially adopted by the Syrians themselves, means "West." Its ideographic writing MAR.TUconsists of MAR (dialectal Sumerian for GAR) = Akkadian sakdnu, "to install, to place," and TU = Akkadian erebu, "to enter," and its derivations: niribu, "entrance," erebu, "sunset."'21 The terms "Canaan"and "Amurru"were largely synonymous in the Amarna Age texts and in the Bible.22

II Of all explanations of the Greek Phoinix, "Phoenician," (plur. Phoinikes) and Phoi- nike, "Phoenicia," the most convincing is certainly the derivation from phoinix, "purple," referring to the characteristic Phoenician trade. For Ed. Meyer, the most prominent defender of this theory, phoinix was a purely Greek word.23E. A. Speiser also shared the "interpretation of the Greek term as a strictly European development. That is to say, started out as a Greek based on 'red.' phoinix appellative, presumably phoinos, ,,24 It was admitted that phoinix derives (through phoinos < *phon-io-s, "murderous, san- guinary, blood-red") from phonos, "murder," for which the Indo-European root was restored, on the basis of numerous cognates, as *guhono-s.25 But the primitive sound gU still existed in Mycenaean Greek as q. Now the adjective "Phoenician" for certain im- ported goods appears already in the Linear B texts as ponika (= phoinika), which also meant, along with the form ponikija, "painted crimson, dyed crimson,"26 Ventris and Chadwick, therefore, correctly stated that ponika was "probably a loanword; not from phoinos 'blood-red,' which is from *guhonjos."27 If, then, phoinix can no longer be considered a Greek word, its source must be sought, most probably, among the very people who were famous as crimson and purple dyers and whom the Greeks called Phoinikes. Now Hebrew puwwd, Arabic fuwwa, is the name of Rubia tinctorumL., or dyer's madder, a herbaceous plant at home in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, one of the most common sources of red dye and imitation purple in anti-

20oIn the form kanica, it means (a) "fall, or be language and culture differed so little, that it is hard thrown, face-down to the ground," (b) "approach, to find a satisfactory criterion for use of these names," arrive (said of the night)." Cf. A. de Bieberstein W. F. Albright, "The Biblical Period," in The Jews: Kazimirski, Dictionnaire arabe-franCais, II, 935 f. Their History, Culture, and Religion, ed. by Louis 21 Cf. R. Labat, Manuel d'"pigraphie akkadienne. Finkelstein, I (1949), 13. Nos. 307, 597, 58; CAD, IV, 258-59. 23 Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, I and 22 EA (2d In 151:50, mttKi-na-ah-na designates all of 3d ed.), 1, 97; 2, 66. Syria including Phoenicia, the Orontes valley, Ugarit, 24 E. A. Speiser, op. cit. (n. 4), p. 123. and even Danuna (Eastern Cilicia). m"tKi-na-a[l]-ni 25 Emile Boisacq, Dictionnaire de la in EA 109:46 and matKi-na-a-ah-[hi] in EA 30:1 have 4tymologique f. the same comprehensive meaning. In the Pentateuch, langue grecque (1923), pp. 1032 J and P call the pre-Israelite population "Canaanites," 26 M. Ventris and J. Chadwick, Documents in E and D, "Amorites."-"There is much confusion in Mycenaean Greek (1956), pp. 344, 405. tradition between Canaanites and Amorites, whose 27 Ibid., p. 405. "CANAAN,""PHOENICIAN," AND "PURPLE" 349

quity.28 Pwt appears as early as Ugarit in a context that firmly establishes its meaning as "madder-dyed textile." 29 A Hebrew clan of Galilee (which was contiguous to Phoe- nicia) bore the name of Puwwd, or P,~' 30 and is quoted next to T61lc, "crimson" (Gen. 46:13; Num. 26:23; I Chron. 7:1 f.).31 The gentilic of Puwwd is PiCti (Num. 26:23), and there is no need to suspect an error: this is a formation of the same aspect as the Hebrew adjectives 'adm6ni, "red," qadm6ni,"oriental," with the assimilation of the half- consonant w to the correspondingvowel u into a long 4i. This form pini, adjective from puwwd, "red dye," provides us with the prototype of the Greek phoin-ix32 and of the Latin Poen-us, pun-icus. It corresponds to the Greek word both phonetically and semantically. As a Semitic loanword, it is by no means exceptional in Mycenaean Greek, which contains several other words of Semitic origin.33

III Phoinix is not the only Greek term for "purple" that can be traced back to West Semitic.34 Another possible case is porphyra, the very prototype of English "purple." It was supposed until recently that porphyra for "purple" was post-Homeric, but it turned out that as early as in the Linear B tablets the adjective popureja (= porphyrea) applied to purple-dyed garments.35Homer used only the verb porphyr6,"to rise seething, to be agitated," referring to the turbulent sea or to the restless heart.36 Was there any relationship between these two words? Most attempts to derive porphyra from the verb porphyr6 were extremely contrived and unconvincing.37 According to Ventris and Chadwick, "semantic connection [of porphyra] with porphyr6, 'swirl,' is dubious."'38Boisacq, earlier, was skeptical about 28 See R. J. Forbes, Studies in Ancient Technology, sfa ki-na-ah-hi, "blue and red purple wool," in the IV (1956), 106 ff. Note in particular: "Much confusion Nuzu text SMN 538 (= No. 77 of the collection by has been caused by the untranslatable terms used by Pfeiffer and Speiser, quoted n. 3 above), 11. 13-15. Is the ancients to design the different shades of scarlet, it only by coincidence that the name of Mount Tabor purple, and crimson.... A term like "purpura" (Gr. (Tdb6r), situated in the same territory as the two porphyra) may mean anything in the violet-purple- clans T61ld and Puwwd, recalls tabarru, the com- scarlet range.... Purple being so expensive (about prehensive Akkadian term for "purple, scarlet" $7000.-lb) was of course imitated and we have (probably a loanword)? many recipes for such substitutes" (p. 119); "Vitru- 32 The suffix -ix (= ik-s) is Greek. The diphthong vius' description of the imitation purple dyes made in -oi- is due to the normal transformation *phon-io-s his days (VII, 14.1-2): 'Purple colors are also made (no relation to phonos "murder"!) > phoinos. The by dyeing chalk with madder and hysginum"' (p. vowel o for Semitic u is quite common in Greek 131); dyeing with madder as reconstructed by transliterations (especially in the Septuagint). Latin Reinkin from the text of the Papyrus Holmiensis: punicus may have retained the original vocalization "Dyeing purple with madder" (p. 136). (the Romans could have borrowed the word directly 29 RS 19.56 (Ch. Virolleaud, PRU V, No. 51) from the Carthaginians); the diphthongization in (4) arbc. kkrm (5) tmn. mat. kbd (6) pwt (partition line) Poenus is an inner-Latin development. (7) tmn. mat. pttm, "four talents eight hundred heavy 33 Ventris and Chadwick, op. cit., pp. 91, 135. (shekels) of madder (-dyed wool), eight hundred 34 Albright, in the passage referred to in n. 7 (heavy shekels) of linen." The word pwt is left without above, suggested that Greek kyanos, "lapis lazuli" translation in PR U V. (whence kyaneos, "dark-blue"), was connected with 30 The mutual relation of the forms Puwwd and Akkadian uqnd (Ugaritic iqni), same meaning. Pi2d is the same as between Ugaritic hw (pronounced 35 Ventris and Chadwick, op. cit., pp. 321, 405. huwwd) and Hebrew hua (still pronounced hQId at the 36 Boisacq, op. cit., pp. 805 f. time of the Dead Sea Scrolls). The Ugaritic pers. n. 37 Liddel and Scott, Greek and English Dictionary, Pwn (Gordon, UM 313:8) may be related. pp. 1226 f., supposed that the common semantic 31 T6did, properly "worm," designated the kermes element in porphyrd and porphyra was the idea of insects from which crimson dye was extracted, and darkness; others, conversely, tried to identify the idea the dye itself (also called ?dni in Hebrew, tn in of the rapid movement of the waves with that of bril- Ugaritic); same use of the cognate tultu in Akkadian: liance, sparkling, variation of colors (quoted in cf. hu-ru-hu-ra-ti ?a tu-ul-time6 (genitive), "rouge ex- Boisacq, loc. cit.). 38 tracted from worms," preceded by sfona4uqnimeG and Ventris and Chadwick, op. cit., p. 405. 350 JOURNAL OF NEAR EASTERN STUDIES such a connection and even believed that "a Semitic origin [of porphyra] is probable, though unknown." 39 But Victor B6rard remarked in passing that for extracting purple from murices "il fallait deux jours de 'bouillon' (c'est le sens du porphyra)";40 according to Pliny, even nine days of continuous boiling were required.41 Thus the technology of purple production provides us with a single and persuasive etymology of porphyra. V. B6rard, despite his love for Semitic etymologies, did not follow Boisacq's conjecture about the probable origin of this word. But the underlying verb porphyr6 does not seem to be of good Greek derivation; its meaning ("to swirl, whirl, flash, jerk, seethe") hardly allows us to consider it a reduplication of phyr6, "to knead, moisten," as is usually claimed in the dictionaries. Conversely, a verb of the same form and semantics exists in Semitic languages. This verb appears as biliteral, PUR, or geminated, PRR, or reduplicated, PRPR: Arabic fdra, "to boil, be in ebullition (a cauldron or a bubbling spring); make boil," farfara, "to agitate, shake"; Hebrew pi?r/pdrar, "stir, rouse," pari2r, "pot for boiling," pirper, "shake"; middle Hebrew pirper, "move convulsively," pirpfr, "writhing, agony"; Aramaic parper, "move about restlessly."'42 The coincidence, both in form and in meaning, with the Greek verb porphyr6 is hardly fortuitous. The noun porphyra corresponds to West Semitic *parpir (> pirpir), a nominal formation similar to barbiir, harhiir, H alh4il, zarziir, etc.43 It would thus seem that the Phoenician44 purple-fishersof the Bronze Age, who were attracted to the Aegean by its wealth of murex and who processed their catch on the spot,45 transferred to the natives the technological term for the operation of "boiling" or "decoction," parpiir or parpfr,r which became with them, on the one hand, the general term for violent seething and agitation of water, on the other hand, the special term for purple dye, obtained by prolonged boiling. The establishment of the West Semitic origin of phoinix and, probably, of porphyra, is interesting not only from the etymological point of view. It also serves as another con- firmation of steady Greco-Semitic contacts during the Mycenaean Age. It now becomes more difficult to consider the toponyms and personal names Phoinix, Phoinikel, Phoi- nikfis as purely Greek, without any relation to the Phoenicians,46and to claim that the Greek traditions on Phoenician penetration of the Aegean were based on a misinterpreta- tion of these names.47At the very least, the Greeks must have met the Phoenicians and borrowed from them the word for "red dye" before they could use it in their onomastica.

39 Boisacq, loc. cit. Ugaritians, who possessed a thriving purple industry 40 Victor B6rard, Les Ph'niciens et I'Odyssde (2d and were actively engaged in commerce with the ed., 1927), I, 409. Aegean. Forbes, cit., 114. 41 op. IV, 45 Cf. V. B6rard, op. cit., I, 407-10. 42 Cf. the dictionaries by Lane, Kazimirski, 46 "The Name Koehler and Baumgarten, Jastrow, and Dalmann. Speiser, Phoinikes," p. 121. 43 The word firfir for "purple, violet" exists in 47 J. Beloch, "Die Phoeniker am aegaeischen Arabic but it probably has been borrowed from the Meer," Rheinisches Museum fiir Philologie, NF, Greek. XLIX (1894), 127; Ed. Meyer, Gesch. d. Altertums, 44 For the Greeks of the second millennium B.C., II (2d and 3d ed.), Part 1, p. 254, n. 1; and several the term "Phoenicians" certainly included the other authors.